Crude oil futures retreated from recent highs during mid-morning trade in Asia Tuesday as China lowers its economic growth target for 2019.
At 10:25 am Singapore time (0949 GMT), ICE May Brent crude futures were down 26 cents/b (0.4%) from Monday's settle at $65.41/b, while the NYMEX April light sweet crude contract moved 20 cents/b (0.35%) lower to $56.39/b.
According to media reports, Premier Li Keqiang said in his annual report to the National People's Congress early Tuesday that the target expansion for the country's gross domestic product in 2019 was set at a range of 6% to 6.5%. Last year's target was about 6.5%.
"This [Tuesday] morning saw the trickling in of information on China's growth target, which had now been set at an expectedly lower range of between 6.0% to 6.5%," IG market strategist Pan Jingyi said.
"It's a broad risk off start for markets, crude prices falling in tandem. The cross winds of the contempt towards the latest prospective trade news coupled with China's early announcement of the lower targets are ones to weigh," Pan added.
Trade concerns between US and China remained the focus of equity markets, analysts said.
"Details from the US-China trade deal remains the elephant in the room," UOB said in a note Tuesday.
"US stock markets' good start to March ended just as fast on Monday after the initial gains on US-China trade talk optimism was more than offset by weak US construction spending data," it added.
According to analysts surveyed by Platts Monday, US commercial crude stocks were expected to grow 1.9 million barrels to around 447.75 million barrels during the week ended March 1.
The build would pare the nationwide surplus to the five-year average of US Energy Information Administration data to 2.33%, the narrowest surplus to the average since early November, Platts reported.
In other news, Libya's NOC has lifted force majeure on operations at the Sharara field after almost three months following the removal of an armed group that had occupied the site, the state-owned company said Monday.
Production at the country's largest oil field "is expected to resume within the next few hours, with regular output to be reached over the coming days," NOC said in a statement.
The lift in the force majeure would pave the way for Libya to boost production to over 1 million b/d for the first time since early-December, Platts reported.
As of 0225 GMT, the US Dollar Index was up 0.06% 96.61.
